ternary operator

switch statement

The switch statement in Groovy is backwards compatible with Java code; so you can fall through cases sharing the same code for multiple matches.

One difference though is that the Groovy switch statement can handle any kind of switch value and different kinds of matching can be performed.

Switch supports the following kinds of comparisons

Class case values matches if the switchValue is an instanceof the class

Regular expression case value matches if the string of the switchValue matches the regex

Collection case value matches if the switchValue is contained in the collection. This also includes ranges too (since they are Lists)

if none of the above are used then the case value matches if the case value equals the switch value

How switch works

The case statement performs a match on the case value using the isCase(switchValue) method, which defaults to call equals(switchValue) but has been overloaded for various types like Class or regex etc.

So you could create your own kind of matcher class and add an isCase(switchValue) method to provide your own kind of matching.